Exercises in Style Read online

  NEIGHBOUR:

  Oh say, what ails thee?

  DANDY:

  Sir, if thou continuest to tread on my transductor,

  The Fates will surely constrain me to call, Ah! the conductor.

  NEIGHBOUR:

  His words deep within my heart are sculptured.

  3. The Conductor. “My friends! See, see!”

  Recit. & Aria.

  CONDUCTOR:

  My friends! See, see! the traffic gathers all around us! How shall we proceed? O kindly traffic stream! that increaseth and multiplieth so that total immobility is reached and the weary passengers will thus listen to my song—to thee I give thanks. I start, I quake, I tremble, the sweat pours off my brow—but I will sing it.

  FEMALE PASSENGER:

  Oh! I am fainting! (faints)

  CONDUCTOR:

  O sweet and friendly traffic stream,

  This token of my high esteem Receive!

  To thee and thy continued favour

  Is due this modest semi-quaver—This breve!

  How sweet to me thy diesel fumes,

  Thy breath the air of night perfumes And day!

  For when we cannot move along

  Then listen those to my heartfelt song Who pay!

  PASSENGERS:

  Bravo Bravo Bravo Bis Encore Bravo.

  CONDUCTOR:

  Thank you, my friends, thank you. (Repeats his Aria)

  PASSENGERS:

  Bravo Bravo Bravo.

  NEIGHBOUR (to Dandy):

  Sir—

  PASSENGERS:

  He has departed!

  NEIGHBOUR: Ah!

  ACT II

  4. Final Chorus of Passengers. “Ah! once again we see him.

  PASSENGERS:

  Ah! once again we see him

  In front of Saint-Lazare,

  Ah! what a great coincidence,

  ’Tis he! Oh how bizarre!

  But see! that friend who with him talks

  Of buttons, goes too far,

  Too far, ah! too far,

  But see! that friend who with him talks

  Of buttons, goes too far,

  Of buttons, of buttons,

  Of buttons, goes too far.

  * Replacing Italianismes

  or ze Frrensh

  Wurn dayee abaout meeddayee Ahee got een-too a büss ouich ouoz goeeng een ze deerekssion off ze Porte Champerret. Eet ouoz fool, nearlee. Ahee got een all ze sahme ahnd Ahee saw a mahn een eet oo ahd a lorng neck ahnd a aht ouiz a sorrt off playted streeng round eet. Zees mahn got ahngree ouiz a shahp oo ouoz trreeding ohn eez toes, ahnd zen ee ouent ahnd saht daoun.

  A beet lattère Ahee saw eem again een frronnt off ze gare Saint-Lazare ouiz a dahndy oo ouoz ahdveesing eem to move eez ohverrcowat bouton a leetle beet ayère urp.

  * Replacing Poor lay Zanglay

  poonerisms

  One May about didday, on the bear fatborm of a plus, I maw a san with a nery vong leck and whose cat was enhircled by a pliece of straited pling. Chuddenly this sap rarted a stow with a tan who was meading on his troes. Hen he thurried off to fret a geat which was see.

  Two lours hater I haw gim asain in lont of the frare Gaint-Sazare, advistening to the lice of a lart asmec.

  otanical

  After nearly taking root under a heliotrope, I managed to graft myself on to a vernal speedwell where hips and haws were squashed indiscriminately and where there was an overpowering axillary scent. There I ran to earth a young blade or garden pansy whose stalk had run to seed and whose nut, cabbage or pumpkin was surmounted by a capsule encircled by snakeweed. This corny, creeping sucker, transpiring at the palms, nettled a common elder who started to tread his daisies and give him the edge of his bristly ox-tongue, so the sensitive plant stalked off and parked himself.

  Two hours later, in fresh woods and pastures new, I saw this specimen again with another willowy young parasite who was shooting a line, recommending the sap to switch the top bulbous vegetable ivory element of his mantle blue to a more elevated apex—as an exercise in style.

  edical

  After a short session of heliotherapy I was afraid I might get put in quarantine but I managed to climb without mishap into an ambulance full of stretcher cases. Amongst them I diagnosed a dyspeptic who was suffering from chronic gigantism with tracheal elongation and who was wearing a hat whose ribbon was deformed by rheumatism. This cretin suddenly worked himself up into a hysterical fit because a cacochymic was pounding his gomphous tylosis; then, having discharged his bile, he isolated himself to nurse his convulsions.

  I saw him again later, he was standing outside a Lazaretto looking haggard and engaged in a consultation with a quack about a furuncle which was disfiguring his pectorals.

  busive

  After a stinking wait in the vile sun I finally got into a filthy bus where a bunch of bastards were squashed together. The most bastardly of these bastards was a pustulous creature with a ridiculously long windpipe who was sporting a grotesque hat with a cord instead of a ribbon. This pretentious puppy started to create because an old bastard was pounding his plates with senile fury, but he soon climbed down and made off in the direction of an empty seat that was still damp with the sweat of the buttocks of its previous occupant.

  Two hours later, my unlucky day, I came upon the same bastard holding forth with another bastard in front of that nauseating monument they call the gare Saint-Lazare. They were yammering about a button. Whether he has his furuncle raised or lowered, I said to myself, he’ll still be just as lousy, the dirty bastard.

  astronomical

  After slowly roasting in the browned butter of the sun I finally managed to get into a pistachio bus which was crawling with customers as an overripe cheese crawls with maggots. Having paid my fare, I noticed among all these noodles a poor fish with a neck as long as a stick of celery and a loaf surmounted by a ridiculous donkey’s dinner. This unsavoury character started to beef because a chap was pounding the joints of his cheeses to pulp. But when he found that he had bitten off more than he could chew, he quailed like a lily-livered dunghill-cock and bolted off to stew in his own juice.

  I was digesting my lunch going back in the bus when I saw this half-baked individual in front of the buffet of the gare Saint-Lazare with a chap of his own kidney who was giving him the fruit of his experience on the subject of garnishing his coating, with particular reference to a cheese plate.

  oological

  In the dog days while I was in a bird cage at feeding time I noticed a young puppy with a neck like a giraffe who, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wore yet a precious beaver upon his head. This queer fish obviously had a bee in his bonnet and was quite bats, he started yak-yakking at a wolf in sheep’s clothing claiming that he was treading on his dogs with his beetle-crushers. But the sucker got a flea in his ear; that foxed him, and quiet as a mouse he ran like a hare for a perch.

  I saw him again later in front of the Zoo with a young buck who was telling him to bear in mind a certain drill about his fevvers.

  utile

  How can one describe the impression created by the contact of ten bodies squeezed together on the back platform of an S bus one day about noon near the rue de Lisbonne? How can one express the impression made by the sight of an individual with a neck so long as to be deformed and with a hat whose ribbon has been replaced, no one knows why, by a bit of string? How can one convey the impression given by a quarrel between a placid passenger unjustly accused of purposely treading on the toes of someone and that grotesque someone happening to be the individual described above? How can one translate the impression provoked by the latter’s flight, disguising his feeble cowardice by pretending to benefit by a seat?

  Finally, how can one formulate the impression caused by the reappearance of this specimen in front of the gare Saint-Lazare two hours later accompanied by a well-dressed friend who was suggesting a sartorial amelioration to him?

  odern style

  In a bus one day it so happened that I was a
witness of the following as you might say tragi-comedy which revealing as it does the way our French cousins go on these days I thought I ought to put you in the picture. When the bus is full all the passengers foregather on the back platform, and one of them was a fancy-pants of the first water with a fantastic long neck and a hat with a plaited cord or what have you round it and a pansy sort of overcoat—the lot. All very pricey, no doubt, but definitely not my cup of tea. Well this chap, what he did, he started to go for the chap standing next to him, claimed he kept treading on his toes if you please. Whether he was or wasn’t I wouldn’t know, to tell the truth I never saw, but if he was, well, fair enough, I mean to say, these sort of smart alecs there ought to be a law against them. Not that I’m so particularly choosy myself — I really couldn’t care less. I reckoned he’d have his work cut out to cut any ice, and to be fair I must say I was right. What do you know, he just ran away. How yellow can you get?

  Well, the thing is, two hours later I saw him again, he was with another chap who was giving him some technical know-how. He was telling him he ought to contact a tailor to move a button on that pansy overcoat of his, it was a must.

  robabilist

  The contacts between inhabitants of a large town are so numerous that one can hardly be surprised if there occasionally occurs between them a certain amount of friction which generally speaking is of no consequence. It so happened that I was recently present at one of these unmannerly encounters which generally take place in the vehicles intended for the transport of passengers in the Parisian region in the rush hours. There is not in any case anything astonishing in the fact that I was a witness of this encounter because I frequently travel in this fashion. On the day in question the incident was of the lowest order, but my attention was especially attracted by the physical aspect and the headgear of one of the protagonists of this miniature drama. This was a man who was still young, but whose neck was of a length which was probably above the average and whose hat-ribbon had been replaced by a plaited cord. Curiously enough I saw him again two hours later engaged in listening to some advice of a sartorial order which was being given to him by a friend in the company of whom he was walking up and down, rather nonchalantly I should have said.

  There was not much likelihood now that a third encounter would take place, and the fact is that from that day to this I have never seen the young man again, in conformity with the established laws of probability.

  ortrait

  The styal is a very long-necked biped that frequents the buses of the S-line at about midday. It is particularly fond of the back platform where it can be found, wet behind the ears, its head covered by a crest which is surrounded by an excrescence of the thickness of a finger and bearing some resemblance to a piece of string. Of peevish disposition, it readily attacks its weaker brethren, but if it encounters a somewhat lively retort it takes flight into the interior of the vehicle where it hopes it will be forgotten.

  It may also be seen, but much more rarely, in the environs of the gare Saint-Lazare in the shedding season. It keeps its old skin to protect it against the cold in winter, but it is often torn to allow for the passage of the body; this kind of overcoat should fasten fairly high up by artificial means. The styal, incapable of discovering these for itself, goes off at that time to find another biped of a closely related species which gives it exercises to do,

  Styalography is a branch of theoretic and deductive zoology which can be cultivated at any time of year.

  athematical

  In a rectangular parallepiped moving along a line representing an integral solution of the second-order differential equation:

  y” + PPTB(x)y’ + S = 84

  two homoids(of which only one, the homoid A, manifests a cylindrical element of length L > N encircled by two sine waves of period π immediately below its crowning hemisphere) cannot suffer point contact at their lower extremities without proceeding upon divergent courses. The oscillation of two homoids tangentially to the above trajectory has as a consequence the small but significant displacement of all significantly small spheres tangential to a perpendicular of length l < L described on the supra-median line of the homoid A’s shirt-front.

  est Indian *

  In a bus with bags of people on, only room for two-three more, it have a fellar with a string instead of a ribbon round he hat, and this fellar look at another test with a loud tone in he eye and start to get on ignorant and make rab about this test treading on he toes. The test start to laugh kiff-kiff and the fellar get in one set of confusion, he looking poor-me-one and outing off fast for vacant seat.

  Later I bounce him up, he coasting lime in the Cour de Rome, it have another test giving him ballad, he advicing him: “You best hads get that button moved.”

  * Replacing Paysan

  nterjections

  Psst! h’m! ah! oh! hem! ah! ha! hey! well! oh! pooh! poof! ow! oo! ouch! hey! eh! h’m! pffft!

  Well! hey! pooh! oh! h’m! right!

  recious

  It was in the vicinity of a midday July. The sun had engraved itself with a fiery needle on the many-breasted horizon. The asphalt was quivering softly, exhaling that tender, tarry odour that gives the carcinomous ideas at once puerile and corrosive about the origin of their malady. A bus in green and white livery, emblazoned with an enigmatic S, came to gather from the neighbourhood of the Pare Monceau a small and favoured batch of postulant-passengers into the moist confines of sudiferous dissolution. On the back platform of this masterpiece of the contemporary French automobile industry, where itinerants were packed together like sardines in a tin, an Incorrigible rascal who was slowly advancing towards the commencement of his fourth decade and who was carrying between a neck of almost serpentine length and a hat encircled by a cordelet a head as insipid as it was leaden raised his voice to complain with an unfeigned bitterness which seemed to emanate from a glass of gentian-bitters, or from any other liquid of similar properties, of a phenomenon of the nature of a recurring blow or shock which in his opinion had its origin in a hic et nunc present co-user of the P.P.T.B. In order to give utterance to his lament he adopted the acid tones of a venerable vidame who gets his hindquarters pinched in a public privy and who strange to state does not at all approve of this compliment and is not at all that way inclined.

  Later, when the sun had already descended by several degrees the monumental stairway of its celestial parade and when I was once more causing myself to be conveyed by another bus of the same line, I perceived the individual described above displacing himself in a peripatetic fashion in the Cour de Rome in the company of an individual ejusdem farinae who was giving him, in this locality dedicated to automobilistic circulation, sartorial advice which hung by the thread of a button.

  nexpected

  They were sitting round a café table when

  Albert joined them. René, Robert, Adolphe,

  Georges and Théodore were there.

  “How’s everything?” asked Robert amicably.

  “All right,” said Albert.

  He called the waiter.

  “I’ll have a picon,” he said.

  Adolphe turned towards him:

  “Well, Albert, what’s new?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Nice day,” said Robert.

  “Bit cold,” said Adolphe.

  “Oh I say, I saw something funny today,” said Albert.

  “It is warm though,” said Robert.

  “What?” asked René.

  “In the bus, going to lunch,” replied Albert.

  “What bus?”

  “The S.”

  “What did you see? “ asked Robert.

  “I had to wait for at least three before I could get on.”

  “Not surprising at that time of day,” said Adolphe.

  “Well, what did you see?” asked René.

  “We were terribly squashed,” said Albert.

  “Good opportunity for pinching bottoms.”

  “Pooh,” said Albert. “Tha
t’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “There was a queer sort of chap next to me.”

  “What was he like?” asked René.

  “Tall, skinny, with a queer sort of neck.”

  “What was it like?” asked René.

  “As if someone’d been having a tug of war with it.”

  “An elongation,” said Georges.

  “And his hat, now I come to think of it; a queer sort of hat.”

  “What was it like?” asked René.

  “Didn’t have a ribbon, but a plaited cord round it.”

  “Funny,” said Robert.

  “Then again,” continued Albert, “he was the peevish type.”

  “How come?” asked René.

  “He started to pick on the chap next to him.”

  “How come?” asked René.

  “He said he was treading on his toes.”

  “On purpose?” asked Robert.

  “On purpose,” said Albert.

  “And then what?”

  “Then what? He simply went and sat down.”

  “Is that all? “asked René.

  “No. Funny thing is, I saw him again two hours later.”

  “Where?” asked René.

  “In front of the gare Saint-Lazare.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Albert. “He was walking up and down with a pal who was calling his attention to the fact that the button of his overcoat was a bit too low.”

  “That is in fact the advice I was giving him,” said Theodore.

  Page from Queneau’s ms.: “La fonction ∫V(2)02”